Again Read Free Page B

Eventually, I convinced her going back to college was a
better choice than rehab, which I could have paid for with the money I used to
finance this semester. I went through a very long explanation about how rehab
would only solve one problem and how I had several; the largest in my mind was that
I’d never gotten a college degree.
    If I had graduated the first
time around, I never would have been David’s assistant. I would have had my own
career, my own life. I wouldn’t have only been working to make someone else’s
everything easier.
    Besides, I’d told her, “If
this doesn’t work, I always have rehab to crash into.”
    What I didn’t say but
couldn’t stop thinking was, if rehab didn’t work, there was nowhere lower to
go.
    Veronica had said to “stop
being stupid and to do what everyone else did when they were about to turn
thirty and get Botox.”
    Examining the dorm hallway,
the half-open doors and students hugging and high-fiving hellos to each other,
I wondered if I should have just stuck a syringe of poison into my brow.
    Of course, there wasn’t
enough plastic surgery in the world to forget how David had ended things. You’re
a drunk, you have no direction, you’re fired, and we’re through, was the
basic gist. Our relationship wasn’t going anywhere anyway. He was not only my
married boss, but a father and fifteen years older than me.
    I reached my dorm room. The
door was closed and music was crashing from it like a litter of kittens being
strangled. I touched my cat ears hat; she was going to hate me.
    I considered knocking, but
it was my room and I was eleven years older than the person I was suddenly
insanely nervous to meet. I opened the door quickly and walked inside.
    She squinted. Her
black-lined eyes slithered from my boots to my white cat ears hat.
    My side of the room was as naked
as a jail cell, hers was like the store Hot Topic had thrown up and then had a
seizure all over it.
    Her wardrobe matched the
walls. She wore plaid boxer shorts on top of tights, and a ripped black T-shirt
seemingly sliced to shreds by a demon’s talons with a blood-red tank
underneath. If she was on one of those makeover shows, her look would have been
a serious make way over.
    My roommate was goth. Or at
least that was what we called them back in my day.
    I smoothed down my hair. I
needed to switch off that part of my brain. This was my day now.
    She didn’t have to ask the
question plastered on her face. Who the fuck are you?
    “I’m your new roommate, Kate
Townsend,” I said, wondering if I would have to go see Carter. I
wondered what the protocol was for being afraid your roommate would carve you
up in your sleep.
    Maybe being stuck in the
bathroom with Carter had been safer. Clearly, I couldn’t stop remembering being
stuck with him in the bathroom.
    “If you tell me to call you
Katie or Kiki or Kitty Cat,” she said, staring at the ears on my hat, “I will
kill you.”
    “Kate is fine,” I said,
throwing my duffle bag on the bare mattress.  The way she looked, I believed
her. At least I wouldn’t be distracted from my studies by any late night gab
sessions.
    Did people even say gab
anymore?
    “What should I call you?” I
asked, attempting to show her I wasn’t afraid of her. Even though, who was I
kidding?
    “Dawn.”
    That seemed far too sunny
for someone so fixated on being dark. I couldn’t tell if she was being ironic
or if it was her given name. “Pretty,” I tried.
    “Not really,” she explained.
“Dawn is when night starts to cease. It is an extremely dangerous time for the
underworld.”
     “Fierce,” I replied, hoping
that might go over better.
    “Who are you, Tyra Banks?” she
sneered above her music.
    Apparently nothing with Dawn
was going to go over better. I didn’t mention her name would probably also make
most people think about dish soap.
    She regarded me more
closely, her black eyeliner vibrating as she glared. “What year are you?”
    Shit, here we go.